The Most Challenging Dinner Guest Ever: And 5 Delicious Meals To Feed Them

We've all been there. The Most Challenging Dinner Guest Ever is coming to dinner. The vegan, gluten-free, egg-free, nut-free, how-in-the-world-do-I-feed-them friend. Rise to the occasion — we have five delicious meals that will not only work but satisfy and delight in even the most ingredient-constrained circumstances!

I saw this infographic above at the marvelous designer Amy Sly's portfolio and had to laugh.

Haven't we all been there? Looked around the dinner party plan and realized that our guests overlapped in a particularly challenging way, or that one person at the table stretched our culinary ingenuity? It's not fair, of course, to label someone the "worst" dinner guest just if they have allergies (it's not their fault!). But privately perhaps you've been dismayed — how do I take care of this person?

And sometimes we ourselves are that Most Difficult Dinner Guest, cringing a little as we tell our host that yes, soy milk is still OK, and teff flour is in, but we've recently developed a nasty allergic reaction to eggplant.

Sometimes the Most Difficult Dinner Guest is an aggregate (one guest is gluten-free, another vegan, another races to the hospital if they touch a peanut).

To the engaged cook, however, these guests and challenges are not moments of exasperation — they are inspiration and a challenge to create something delicious in constrained circumstances. Anyone can make buttery foie gras on white toast taste good; it is the constraints that show what you're really made of, as a cook.

We here at The Kitchn run the gamut of omnivores to sometime vegans, with many food avoidances and allergies between us. Over the years we've come up with a few knock-out meals for our own Most Difficult Dinner Guest dilemmas. Here are five meals that will always work, always delight, with care and deliciousness both.

Faith is executive editor of The Kitchn and author of three cookbooks, including the James Beard Award-winning The Kitchn Cookbook, coauthored with Sara Kate Gillingham, as well as Bakeless Sweets. She lives in Columbus, Ohio with her husband Mike.